Ballot Integrity In the State of Washington

A reader emailed earlier today to say that he and his wife recently moved to Washington State. His wife is a Canadian citizen who has a green card. Much to their surprise, she received in the mail a voter registration card issued by the county in which they live, informing her that “You are registered to vote.” Our reader writes:

My wife is a Canadian citizen, has her green card, and just received her voter registration card in the mail. Not sure what’s up with that, she did not do anything to actively register to vote. We have no idea how she became a registered voter, unless they’re simply registering all residents here in Washington State automatically.

The card says, “You are registered to vote.” It adds, “Your ballot will arrive by mail.” Here is the card, with identifying information deleted:

This woman is probably too honest to vote, but the automatic mailing of a ballot to someone who is not a citizen strikes me as rather diabolical. The recipient doesn’t even need to show up in person to represent, at least implicitly, that she is an eligible voter. All she has to do is return the ballot she receives in the mail. How many ineligible voters are honest enough to resist that temptation? Not many, I suspect.

Why do Democrat-run states like Washington go out of their way to undermine the integrity of the ballot? The obvious answer is that they think they will benefit, in the immediate term, if more ineligible people cast ballots. But I wonder whether the rationale goes deeper. The many measures taken by Democrats that eat away at the integrity of our elections have the effect, cumulatively, of discrediting electoral results and thereby undermining our democracy. Which, in turn, makes it easier for government to seize more and more powers from demoralized citizens. Polls suggest that a large majority of Americans support measures to protect ballot integrity, but so far, at least, that consensus has not been very effective in political terms.